Twelve
by skypig21
Summary: A tale of love, geometry and murder! Miko Kusanagi must bear the burden of and responsibility for murdering the same man, Dr. Rodney McKay, twelve times. Many, many thanks to Kamelion for her enthusiastic support and ideas and to the incomparable Klostes
1. Part One

**Part One**

"Good morning, Miko. How are you today?"

She smiled shyly and bowed demurely out of habit. "I am fine. And you?"

"Peachy," said Colonel Sheppard impassively. "What brings you to the gateroom?"

"I have something to give to the Doctor."

"Ah, well, good. He'll be back in…" he peered at his watch. "Right now, as a matter of fact."

Colonel Sheppard smelled of soap and after-shave. He stood hands on hips beside her, watching the symbols lock and the circle fill with liquid energy. The gateroom glowed cool blue from the event horizon on one side and warmly, with mid-morning sunlight streaming through stained glass windows, on the other.

A ripple and Major Lorne was there, followed by another military fellow. Miko knew nothing about rank, except that officers relinquished their first names in exchange for titles. Major Lorne was "Major" when she addressed him, just as Doctor McKay was "Doctor." She could not imagine calling him Rodney, nor referring to Dr. Zelenka as Radek.

She was called Miko by most, not Dr. Kusanagi. Her colleagues were mostly men. Things were different for men, in the laboratory as anywhere else.

Last out of the pool was the Doctor, her Doctor McKay, his face crumpled and angry. He was like this a lot of the time. The physicist headed towards the Colonel, impatiently flicking his glare to the departing backs of Lorne and the others.

"Well, that was a big, fat waste of time. Technology up the wazoo but no one willing to share it."

"Look at it this way, McKay. Do you really want stuff that's been up somebody's wazoo? At least you weren't gone very long."

"Longer than I wanted to be. Got separated from the group for a little while and they're pretty ticked off about that. Like I'm going to end up dead or something if they miss me for a second."

He sighed impatiently. Miko was also familiar with this. Now that he had paused in his conversation, she approached.

"Doctor McKay?" She waited for him to acknowledge her, as her mother had taught.

McKay looked away from the Colonel, noticing his colleague.

"Yes, Miko, is there something you need me for right now, or can it wait?"

He was like that, always pushing her aside in one way or another. It didn't matter.

"I must do this now. It will take only a moment."

He placed his hands on his hips, mimicking the Colonel. This didn't matter, either.

"All right, I'm waiting. What."

"You will not understand. I am sorry."

Impatient, he crossed his arms over his chest. She became a little scared, then, because his arms had not been like that the times before.

"Sorry for… Just get on with it."

Miko's hands trembled. She always became overwhelmed and tearful each time she did it.

"I am sorry. You told me to do this…"

She reached into her day bag, the one she took everywhere, the one that held her snacks and tea bags and hand cream. The one that also held a 9mm Beretta. With a smooth, practiced motion, Miko clutched the gun, withdrew it from the day bag, aimed it at Dr. Rodney McKay's brilliant brain and pulled the trigger.

…..

The monitor blurred again.

Two days had passed since the…Incident. Radek Zelenka felt as if time had stopped. He thought he might be forever stuck in the moment when he heard someone calling over the city-wide for a med team to report to the gate room. Such announcements were not unusual; usually he ignored them, except when he knew one of his scientific colleagues was off world. If that were the case, he would stop working, finger his headset and ask the control room to report.

The last time this had happened, the day before the Incident, one of the techs had responded with a bored, "Van DerVeer sprained his ankle falling down the steps over here." And Zelenka had smirked and chuckled at the thought of Leo walking mile after mile on an unfamiliar planet, only to be felled once he was home again.

Two days ago, a breathless voice summoning medical assistance alerted him that this time something very bad had occurred. That was the moment that came back to him time and again, not the news itself or when he first laid eyes on McKay's inconsolable teammates, not even the sight of the gateroom when he'd gone there, with specks and spatters and pieces of his friend's head strewn about. Zelenka wanted more than anything to forget the gateroom, and, fortunately, other memories usually surfaced, as his mind took pity on itself.

At this moment, seated before his personal laptop, Zelenka attempted to write a fitting eulogy for Dr. Rodney McKay, his good friend and colleague. Given enough time and distance from this terrible tragedy, Radek felt he could come up with a tribute both respectful and humorous about one of the few people with whom he had felt truly connected.

The memorial was planned for the next day, though. Much too soon and far too painful touching raw nerves like that. Even if he composed something halfway adequate, Radek knew that he would still be too shaken to utter it.

And that was the point at which Radek stopped trying to write. He removed his glasses, placed his hands to his face and wept.

…..

Together they had constructed a brick wall. They were strong for each other and unwilling to let anyone else come inside of the barrier that they had erected.

Teyla Emmagan and Ronon Dex had been sparring when John Sheppard opened the gymnasium door and stood there, pale, blood-splattered and mute with shock. Carson had refused to allow them to see the remains, and they had stopped short, anyway, at the sight of Beckett's stricken face.

So they had left that place, walked a short distance and then embraced each other tightly, there, in the middle of the hallway. This was all that they could do, all that they had needed right then.

A few hours later, Sheppard had shown up at the armory asking for a P90. "Target practice," he'd said, and something in his eyes had made the day-shift Sergeant alert security. Lorne had stopped the Colonel as he'd attempted to remove the weapon from the firing range. In his rage, the Colonel had let loose until the mag was empty and the target shredded and lying in bits on the floor. Then he had thrown the rifle as far as it would go.

After she got her legs back up under her, Teyla decided where they needed to be. Sheppard had been brought up from the firing range bearing a fierce expression and two security guards, who hovered watchfully nearby. Ronon agreed with no discussion. It was settled.

Now it was two days later and they had not left McKay's quarters. Elizabeth had been calling for them over their headsets, pleading with them to let her into their fortress. Elizabeth was walking blindly down her own dark road. Teyla felt a little guilty, knew that they were being cruel.

"Colonel Sheppard." Elizabeth had given up asking politely. "John. Answer me!" she demanded.

The Colonel said nothing. Teyla wondered whether Dr. Weir would ever forgive them for this. She and the Colonel and Ronon sat on the floor of McKay's room, holding hands. The Athosian Funerary Rite lasted two days. The Colonel was very shy about touching people, especially other men. At first he had been unwilling to contribute to the Rite, but Ronon had become angry that his officer was behaving like a child. The Satedan had said that he would not take the chance that McKay's soul would never reach its final resting place. A couple of well-placed offensive maneuvers had convinced the Colonel to participate.

"We pray until sundown, rest, and then pray again from sunrise to sunset. That is the Athosian tradition." Teyla looked at her teammates, at her beloved friends. "Does this abide by the Satedan way?"

"Close enough," Ronon had replied.

Teyla raised her brows at the Colonel.

"Fine," he'd said.

Thus it had been for them since, sitting together, praying, taking breaks for water and sleep. When they were awake, they were together. When they slept, they curled up on McKay's bed, dreaming the prayers that Teyla had spoken, that Ronon had spoken, even the Lord's Prayer, which Sheppard had contributed. When one of them awoke crying, they touched and murmured until the room was quiet, again.

The wall that they built grew higher. When clarity asserted itself, Teyla worried that the wall would become so high that they would not be able to scale it and would remain forever locked inside of this barren place. She felt a sliver of relief fitting between the bricks and mortar when Elizabeth's voice zimmed through her headset on the morning of the third day.

"Colonel Sheppard, Teyla, Ronon. I am right outside the door. Open up this instant or Major Lorne will set some C4 charges and blow a hole in it."

Teyla marveled at the control in Elizabeth's voice. With a sigh, John looked up from the floor. He let go of Teyla's and Ronon's hands and unlocked the door with his will. It slid open silently to reveal Dr. Weir, Lorne and a couple of airmen. Only Elizabeth entered McKay's room. She looked around briefly, taking in the diplomas on the wall and the many things in there that McKay had owned and, perhaps, loved. Allowing her eyes to settle on the remaining members of her strongest team, she focused on the Colonel.

"She is asking for you."

Sheppard stood and faced her. "I have nothing to say to her and I don't care what she has to say to me."

"We have questions that need answers."

"She's not interested in answering questions."

"I want you to go to her. I am ordering…"

"Don't!"

He raised his hand in front of her face. Lorne stepped into the room, gripping his weapon a little tighter. Elizabeth inhaled sharply, frightened perhaps, not expecting John's scorn. Teyla couldn't tell. The two people that Atlantis needed most to be in agreement glared at each other in a battle of wills. Stubborn, pleading, speaking with gestures.

No one could get a point across as well as Elizabeth. She stood silently, letting John read her face. Teyla knew the Colonel could have looked away, but he was a fair man—fair when it came to Elizabeth, anyway—and he seemed to want to understand.

They remained still like this for a time. Finally, the Colonel's shoulders slumped in defeat. He approached Elizabeth and wrapped his arms around her, trying to feed her what his team had grown in their field of sorrows over the last two days. Teyla had seen Elizabeth cry one time. Well, almost cry anyway. This time no reserve of inner strength remained for the woman. She had had no one on which to lean, or else had denied herself the opportunity. No matter. She was leaning now.

…..

"I hope you gave her a lethal injection."

Carson Beckett looked up at Sheppard's approach. The doctor's haggard face tightened in response.

"That was bloody nasty, Colonel. Not that I'm surprised."

John said nothing. He had stopped giving a shit about a lot of things two days ago, among them Beckett's opinion of him. The doctor had been caring for Miko Kusanagi, giving her sedatives, checking her vital signs, trying to break through her relentless sobbing. Now Beckett stood just outside the door to the cell in which Miko was being held.

"I gave her another dose of Haldol. Maybe she'll get some sleep."

"Oh, she's tired? I can help with that, Doc. Seriously." He could almost feel the small woman's neck under his hands as he squeezed just a little tighter, a little tighter still. He had killed many people this way, men usually, enemies of one sort of another. It took more technical proficiency to strangle someone to death than an uninitiated person would think. Most times it needed to be done quickly. For Miko, though, he would have gladly dragged it out for as long as possible.

Beckett eyed John warily.

"She said she will talk only to you, but…" He looked at the military types who had accompanied the Colonel. "They will have to go in, as well. And I'll be right out here."

"You don't trust me?"

John expected Beckett to deck him and was actually disappointed to see the Scot shove his hands into the pockets of his starched, white lab coat. A fit example of self-restraint if ever one presented itself.

"This is not a good time to bring up trust, Colonel."

With a nod to the two airmen guarding the cell, the door was unlocked and John entered followed by the guards. Within the cell stood the Ancient enclosure, fortified with an invisible but impervious energy shield. Captured Wraith had stayed in the cell. On both of those occasions, the prisoners had died in that very room, in that very cage.

But Wraith were rather larger than Miko Kusanagi, and busier in their captivity. Miko sat on the floor, her face buried in her hands, rocking slowly back and forth. Sheppard circled the enclosure, watching this tiny woman, someone with whom he had rarely spoken, rarely even seen. Someone who had meant nothing to him until two days ago.

He came to stand in front of her, just beyond the security field. She made occasional hiccupping sounds, but was otherwise silent. He hated her more than he had ever hated anyone or anything in his life. He had hated Wraith with less passion.

"So. Talk." He would not offer so much as an extra word to her.

She continued to hide her face and move in her self-comforting rhythm. John knew she had heard him, that if she were willing to talk she would do so without further prompting. Still, each second with her was a moment in which he came closer to disarming the guards and using one of their P90s to blow her head to smithereens. But Elizabeth and he had come to a silent agreement. And Carson, God damn him and God bless his soul, had enough to deal with. They all did.

So he waited.

"The Doctor…" Miko's muffled voice bled between her fingers. "When he told me to, I said I wouldn't."

"Wouldn't what?"

"I couldn't. But he said…so I…I…"

John felt glad that Miko wasn't standing there making excuses, because that might have set him off. Carson was right not to trust him. He didn't even trust himself at this point.

Miko continued to rock and sob, rock and sob. Her stuttering devolved out of words into occasional vowel sounds all strung together. If she had a cogent thought, which Sheppard doubted, it wasn't going to come out until she was shitfaced with sedatives. Maybe not even then. Turning to leave, he nodded to the guards, who let their profound relief loosen their features as they reentered the hallway and locked the door behind them.

"Anything?" Carson inquired.

John shook his head. "Nothing. Totally incoherent."

"I'm sorry," the doctor intoned. "I thought she had pulled herself together. She insisted on speaking with you."

John leaned against the wall, felt the tingle typical of the city's response to him. He had gotten accustomed to it over the years.

"You are all right, Colonel?"

Surprised that the physician still cared, what with all of the attitude John had given him, he shook his head.

"I've got to get back to my team," he said, quietly. He craved their comfort, as if he couldn't live without it.

"Of course. I'll walk with you, if you don't mind."

John's back tensed, as if every vertebrae were fused. "My team and I are fine."

"Still, I'd like to talk to…"

"We are fine and you're beginning to really bother me." He pushed away from the wall and turned quickly, guarded and withdrawing even as he spoke.

"You're _not_ fine! _Nobody's_ bloody fine!"

John felt Carson's hand on his shoulder and resisted the urge to snap the man's arm into fifty inoperable pieces.

"Don't touch me," he seethed. "Don't talk to me. Don't pretend to care."

"But I _do_ care. You understand that Dr. Kusanagi could not possibly have been herself when she…did that. Do you expect me to toss her into the sea?"

Sheppard had made some headway towards McKay's room, but Carson, throwing his own sense of self-preservation overboard, pursued him.

"She murdered him in front of you, John." Sheppard flinched at these words, but kept walking. "What am I going to do with you, as well?"

Some yards separated them, now. The doctor stopped and let Sheppard go, but his words echoed off the walls and the floor. Sheppard walked on until he reached Rodney's quarters. The door opened for him. Teyla and Ronon sat facing each other on the floor, eyes closed, holding hands. Ronon was speaking quietly. Without pause, John sat down with them. His teammates moved to accommodate him but did not wait for him to settle himself before continuing.

…..

It had happened like this three times before. Each time had brought the same cascade of overwhelming grief, the babbling that took constant effort to control, as all of the orderly synapses in her brain attempted to overcome the misfiring impulses that threatened to shut her down completely.

Now it was two days later. Miko had managed to speak a few words, which set her head and shoulders above the other times, when there had been nothing she could do but lie there, silent, catatonic until even Dr. Beckett grew tired of tending to her.

The Doctor, her Doctor McKay, had told her that it would always be one of the others. She would not be able to tell them apart. They would not know what was in store for them once they came through the gate. It was meant to be like this; the copies were not given memory chips. They would think they were real and thus behave in exactly the same manner as the real Doctor. Eventually the real one would arrive. That's when it would stop. Until then, she had to do it each and every time until all twelve were gone.

The third day had dawned. Only a few hours of this time remained. Then it would go back to before and they would all forget because it hadn't happened, yet. To them. To him.

She rocked back and forth. "Doctor, Doctor," she said, whispering so quietly that the audio surveillance equipment barely picked it up.

Her wristwatch ticked louder than the sound of his name from her lips.

…..

"Good morning, Miko. How are you today?"

"Fine, thank you, Dr. Weir."

It was the fifth time, now. She had hoped that it would become easier, but no, this time was going to be as hard as the first. Dr. Weir was standing off to the side, speaking with Teyla. They laughed about something as the wormhole engaged and the blue pool happened just like it always did. Then the Major came through, a different one from last time, and another man of rank. Then came Drs. Zelenka and McKay, resuming a discussion that had obviously begun on the planet.

"I am not saying that your numbers are wrong, Radek. I'm simply suggesting that you avoid assuming that your calculations are correct when doing mainframe work without having them checked by someone else. Like me. Or even Sheppard."

Dr. Zelenka responded good-naturedly. That was his greatest strength, aside from having a wonderful mind, his limitless capacity for happiness and his willingness to share it. Miko really loved this about him. She loved all of her co-workers and didn't want to hurt any of them. This time she made no attempt to hide her tears. It was going to happen again, right now.

"Doctor McKay, good day," she said, approaching him just as she had done four times before. "I am sorry."

He had a chance to look at her questioningly for a few seconds. That was all she allowed him because doing this wasn't getting any easier and speaking to him and seeing his face would make it harder still.

"I love you and I'm very sorry." Then she produced the gun from her day bag, pressed it to the Doctor's chest and shot a hole through his heart.

TBC


	2. Part Two

**Part Two**

As she had done four times in the past, Miko dropped the gun and placed her hands over her face as she tried to hide from what she had just done.

"Oh, nonononononononononono!" Her warbling cry mingled with the moans of shock and grief from the others in the gateroom. Someone pulled her hands back, handcuffed her. She kept her eyes tightly closed, blocking out the sight of the blood and of Dr. Zelenka, Teyla and the rest as they reacted to this storm that had suddenly blown away part of their lives.

Miko had been so happy in Atlantis. Happy to be in this wondrous place. Happy to see the Doctor each day, to work with him late into the night. When Dr. Beckett had informed her that she possessed the ATA gene, Mike had felt special, as if she harbored royal blood. That happiness was hard to remember, now.

They took her down a few levels and threw her in the Wraith cage. A long while ago, as one of her first tasks upon arriving in Atlantis, Miko had helped calibrate the cage's force shield to ensure that it would effectively keep any sort of creature within its confines. After each shooting, if she herself survived, Miko was put into the cage and the shield switched on. Dr. Beckett always came in and gave her some medication.

The Haldol made her sleepy. She hadn't slept more than an hour or two at a time since this began. Exhausted by her crimes, Miko lay on the floor of the Wraith cage and cried until sleep overcame her.

…..

Everyone had gone to bed hours ago. Even the Doctor had left the lab, looking rumpled with weariness. She had told him several times that she would be happy to go over the next batch of data when it was ready; he needn't stay up for it. He left without even saying goodnight. This was his way.

The mass spectrometer beeped, telling her that it was ready for a data read. Miko pressed the appropriate series of buttons and the machine transferred pages of information to her laptop on the physical properties of the metal obtained from P3X-774. The Doctor and his team were interested in the energy readings produced by this substance, which were not radiation or heat or anything that they had experienced before. This was something new, perhaps something big.

A thunderclap shook the lab and bowled her over onto the floor. One minute complete calm, the next a cacophony of light and sound and furious wind, which ended abruptly with the appearance of the Doctor, disheveled and panting with effort. His skin glowed in the dimly lit room, transparent, ghostly, without substance. His eyes, wider than Miko had ever seen them, peered around swiftly, searching for something.

"Hnnnn…" he'd said, as if trying to make words come.

Miko stayed where she'd landed, afraid to move or speak. This apparition was the Doctor, somehow, his familiar self yet not quite there.

"Hnnnnnnnn…," he repeated.

"Doctor, what has happened to you?"

His gaze fell on her, scattered at first, then fully focused. His skin became more solid, more there. He wore not his evening clothes but the typical gear donned for offworld missions.

Finally, he keeled over and fell in a heap, completely substantial in the usual way.

For a few moments, the small woman did not know what to do. The Doctor seemed ill, so she placed her hands on his cheeks and shook his head around to wake him.

"Doctor! What is the matter?"

Letting go of his head—and embarrassed to have been touching him at all—she fingered her headset to summon a medical team. McKay stopped her, grabbing her hands and holding them so tightly she squirmed at the discomfort he caused her.

"No, Miko!" He stilled her arms and then, when she nodded, let her go. "I have very little time. You must listen to me very, very carefully."

"Let me help you," she said, moving to lift him.

"Yes," he said, allowing her to sit him up.

"I am listening," she said, distracted at being so close to him.

"You may not believe me but…you have to."

She said nothing but nodded agreeably.

He continued, "You have to do exactly as I tell you. No variations, no chickening out. Can you do that?"

"What…"

"Answer my question!"

She did not understand any of this, but he was the Doctor. Whatever he wanted, she would do it for him.

"I am happy to do anything you ask, Doctor." She had wanted to say this in another, very different context for a long, long time.

…..

McKay knew geometry.

A polyhedron is a three-dimensional geometric shape. A sphere has but one side. A tetrahedron has four sides, or faces, and six edges. A pyramid has five faces and eight edges. A great dirhombicosidodecahedron has 124 faces with 240 edges.

At first McKay didn't know what he had become. Or what had become of him. The Toruvians had captured him, rendered him unconscious and had then halted time in the café, where he had been eating a farewell snack, and also in Atlantis through the open wormhole. By this means, McKay's abduction had been masked and would stay that way until the moment when the first copy was ready to go.

The duplication process began the moment the scientist was placed in the machine. Several samples were taken--skin, sperm, blood and organ tissue. Then a loud clanging sound erupted, almost an explosion, as the first copy was formed and laid in its own cell in a massive structure shaped like a great dirhombicosidodecahedron. McKay cried out in pain as each copy emerged, for the process sent him tearing forward and then springing back, as if he were being slammed around by a gigantic slingshot.

When McKay awoke after the copying procedure, he found himself suspended in the great dirhombicosidodecahedron, in a structure with 124 cells. A copy of him lived in each cell.

Some copies were non-viable the moment they appeared. They twitched a few times, then never moved again. Some lay staring at nothing, for their brains were defective, while others seemed quite active, anxious to leave their cells and complete the longer-term process of obtaining all of McKay's knowledge and experiences..

The copies of him that held the greatest anger killed each other. The less intelligent duplicates perished early on by eating citrus or accidentally setting themselves on fire, stupid things like that. The fragile ones fell apart. Horrified, McKay watched himself die over and over.

The polyhedron became less complex with each revision, the empty cells disappearing at regular intervals once enough of them lost their occupants to miscarriage or defect.

Of the 124 that were placed in the cells of the great dirhombicosidodecahedron, eventually only twelve copies remained. Twelve strong copies, one of which would go back to live in Atlantis in McKay's stead if he let that happen. The rest would be sent to work, perhaps in a lab somewhere, perhaps alongside the original McKay, so that in an ironic twist of fate, he would have to work with himself for a change.

Throughout this process, Atlantis and everyone in it—even Sheppard and Ronon and Teyla at the edge of the open stargate—stayed in a timeless pause.

While the weaker copies were still failing and the stronger ones had not yet been sorted, the Toruvian who watched over McKay, Dreeson, allowed him one Window. A Window could re-set of place and time and allow McKay to return to Atlantis several hours before his capture. There he could do whatever he wished for a few minutes, pick up something to keep with him as he lived among his new people or perhaps present a valuable document to a colleague in hopes that he or she would carry on his research.

Dreeson explained that by using a Window, McKay could speak and touch, if he wished. When the Window was closed, however, McKay would disappear and his visit wiped from the memories of anyone he encountered.

"You are mated?" Dreeson asked, without curiosity.

"Oh, yes," McKay quickly replied. "Many years, now. I miss her terribly."

He was a miserable liar but had hoped that Dreeson would not be able to read him if he kept his face turned away. The Toruvian relented, sounding impatient and conciliatory in the same breath.

"Your mate will forget when the Window closes."

"I understand."

So they agreed to one Window, one visit to his former time and place to say goodbye to her. McKay gratefully accepted the offer and gave considerable thought to what he would say to her, give to her, to Dr. Kusanagi, Miko, the only person he knew who would unquestioningly follow his instructions.

…..

P3X-463 had seemed like Earth only perfect. McKay thought himself somewhat jaded about beautiful places but when he first saw Toruvia from the air he'd gasped in delight. The Toruvians had welcomed them with open arms and shown them a small part of the countryside and the nation's largest city, Sooli. Sooli had no garbage strewn in its streets or homeless people begging for change. The skies above were clear, without smog or coal dust. The water they were given had sparkled in their glasses, naturally unsullied and without any chemicals needed to purify it.

McKay, Sheppard and the rest had marveled at the beauty and quiet of this place, a city populated with fewer than two million people.

Misao Dreeson had been with them from the beginning. His face had first appeared when the MALP opened its eye to his world. McKay would become so sick of that face, its prominent pale-blue eyes, the stubby nose, Dreeson's glowingly white teeth.

"You are curious about us," Dreeson had said to the MALP. "Come and let us show you our world."

McKay had heard this before, of course. Lots and lots of average-looking people had stared into the eyeball of a MALP and lied like dogs. Happened all the time and he had the scars to prove it.

The Toruvians' technologically advanced civilization included the interesting footnote that their womens' natural fertility cycles dictated no more than one conception per 48 months.

Perking up at the mention of anything related to sex, McKay had inquired, "Women on this planet cannot conceive within 48 months of delivering a child?"

"That is correct. Earlier in our peoples' history we experienced a sustained period in which our birth rate was very high. The overcrowding in our cities and the subsequent decline in our standards of living gave rise to poverty and violence. Thus, we took it upon ourselves as a species to limit the frequency of estrus. Now, after many generations, our birth and mortality rates are about equal, which has made us a better people."

McKay, the Colonel and Ronon had paused to ponder this. Without being aware of it, all eyes had turned to Teyla, who tipped her head back suspiciously. McKay had caught himself standing in her glare and looked away.

At the end of their one-day visit, a small flying ship, similar in size to a Puddle Jumper, had transported the team back to the stargate. Air travel was something of a novelty on this world, since beaming technology had apparently come right after clean energy. Their transport carrier silently skimmed the exurban areas, revealing a dense forest that seemed untouched for centuries and a few well-tended, open fields planted with crops. Natural beauty lay everywhere, matching the rarest places of Earth.

Their vehicle was programmed to lift off, fly and land without a pilot or crew, which had offered a bit of privacy that had not gone unappreciated.

"Oh, c'mon, Colonel. What could the Toruvians possibly need from us?"

"McKay…"

"Well?"

Taking a calm approach, Sheppard sat a bit straighter. "They could use some…character," he said at last.

Ronon turned to him and tipped his head. "Character?"

"Yeah, I mean, they're nice enough, smart enough and seem to love McKay to pieces, but there's just something sort of…one-dimensional about them."

"Two," McKay corrected.

His teammates had looked at him.

"Two-dimensional," he'd repeated. "Having height and width but lacking depth."

"I know what two-dimensional means, McKay. Mensa test, remember?"

"You keep pressing that single detail, Colonel. However, a one-dimensional person, a one-dimensional anything, would be visible to us as a line."

"Still, I'm sure Elizabeth will strike up a deal."

"Sure. They provide us with all of their goodies and we send them books of bathroom jokes and 'Get Smart' on DVD."

Their transport had landed in a small village not far from the Stargate. A charming place, the village housed a museum showing local history, complete with moving dioramas of their peaceful lives. A small café had served them a farewell repast of juices and creamy cakes. Dreeson arrived via beam to bid his guests goodbye. All had been serene, in a lovely and somewhat boring way.

"Dr. McKay, I trust you found your visit here interesting," the Toruvian spokesman had said.

"Quite," the physicist had replied. "I would enjoy learning more about your renewable energy technology. On my world such information could lead to the resolution of many problems and conflicts."

The alien had smiled a little bit…

…And even though he was very intelligent, John Sheppard easily fooled people into thinking that he was a dolt. Whether by accident or by design, few who didn't know him realized just how much he picked up on about his surroundings and the people and things that existed there. He had seen patronizing smiles like Dreeson's many times in the past, just before disaster struck.

Then, in a moment, his suspicions were forgotten. Sheppard paused, wondering what he had just felt, disremembering something uncomfortable, as if the scene had radically changed but the look of it remained the same.

With a shrug, he surveyed the room, his team, the sweetcake crumbs on the plate before him.

Dreeson touched Sheppard's shoulder, guided him to the activated stargate.

"Well, thanks…" Sheppard began.

"Think nothing of it, Colonel. We will be happy to speak with your leader when next we meet. Until then…"

They walked among the people of the village, who waved goodbye. As he passed from this place to Atlantis, Sheppard noticed something peculiar in the moment of passing from one world to another: He had seen the same faces over and over on many different people. The last was Dreeson's face on a woman, her hair a different color, her eyes brown. But the face itself was the same, her height and build, as well, as if she were his fraternal twin. And he had seen this face many, many times but hadn't realized it until just before the wormhole took him.

Arriving in the safety of Atlantis, Sheppard forgot this revelation, just as he had forgotten the moment in the café, when nothing was right but nothing was wrong, either.

McKay came through the wormhole immediately after Sheppard. John felt puzzled and turned to his brilliant teammate, his friend, to ask him whether the feeling was mutual. Dr. Kusanagi approached just then.

"Dr. McKay?" she asked, looking pale and nervous.

McKay, fussing with his tac vest, didn't look up. "Yes, Miko. Problem?"

"I'm sorry," she answered.

It was quick. And loud. There would have been only a fraction of a second to react if Sheppard had noticed the little Japanese woman brandishing a weapon. She hadn't been anything worth noticing, though, and, because of that, in the span of a single heartbeat, McKay lay dying on the floor, and Miko's anguished screams flooded the gateroom like a sea breach.

…..

Sometimes she forgot to drop the gun. Or couldn't drop it. Either way, sometimes someone shot her dead right there. Once it had hurt because it took a while to lose consciousness. She had had time to see the Colonel's bewildered expression, note that Ronon had picked up McKay and was running with him in his arms in the direction of the infirmary. The last thing she recalled was someone saying, "Check her. Make sure she's dead."

Most of the times, she threw the weapon aside and let the security officers take her to the Wraith cage. On one occasion, Colonel Sheppard strangled her to death there. That had been the worst part.

Time reset 49.5 hours after McKay died. The reset took them back to 27 hours before his death. There were to be twelve resets for a total of 918 hours, 38.25 Earth days, assuming one of the copies died each time. That is what the Doctor had said.

"I am pretending that you are my wife," he'd said when he appeared before her in the lab. Kusanagi hoped that she had not hallucinated the Doctor or his crazy-sounding words. When he shoved the memory chip under the skin on her arm, it was the first time he had ever given her anything.

"You will remember all of this until the chip is removed. Each time we reset, the me that comes through the gate won't know what's going to happen. The copy won't know that he's about to die. No one here will know, either, and you can't tell them because it might change the scenario, screw with the plan, and the copy might not die. If it survives even one time—if one copy of me survives here—I will never make it back." With that, he massaged her arm, activating the chip.

"I don't understand…" she had felt like a first-year, like a neophyte.

"No questions. The chip usually works with both time and memory. I found two broken chips that preserve memory only, one of which is here," he had pointed to her arm. "I have a couple of others, but going through the gate always causes a narrow retrograde memory wipe. When I come through, the real me, I will try to find some way to activate my chip when I get here to remember about you. Look, it's a long shot but I'm working with a very small window of time."

McKay had grabbed her wrists and peered intently into her eyes. He had never before looked at her as if she were really there, and had certainly never deliberately touched her. "They're taking me back, now. Damn it!"

"How will I know which one is really you?"

"When I come through I will be the thirteenth. No matter what happens, I will be the thirteenth."

"You want me to kill you?"

"Yes, yes! The copies of me."

"They will look and act like you?"

"Yes."

"I…I can't…"

He had gripped her harder, even as he began losing corporeal integrity. "You have to."

Kusanagi had realized that this was the only opportunity that she would ever have to make him respect her. Hoping he could still hear her as transparency clouded his features, she had said, "I will do this, Doctor. Do not worry."

Then he was gone and the lab had become silent, again, except for the whirring fans cooling the computers.

Miko remembered all of this as she awoke and listened to the dead silence of the cell with the Wraith cage. Surely the Colonel would have been a much better choice. Miko was half afraid of him herself; he'd kill anything without a moment's hesitation. Ronon would have done it without even thinking and felt none the worse for his efforts. Why had the Doctor asked her?

…..

"We saw you with your mate. Have you betrayed us?"

McKay decided that coyness was not his style. Therefore, anger was a good substitute.

"How dare you eavesdrop on my wife and me! What if we had decided to…you know…." Dreeson looked at him blankly. Of course. Toruvians knew nothing of sex anymore. They reproduced like Minolta copiers.

"You gave her something. What was it?"

"A gift. My people do this, we place gifts under our mates' skin."

"A gift."

"Yes, a charm that I made from bits of metal."

Dreeson made the beam come again. It took McKay to the polyhedron. This was during the initial dying-off phase, when he and Atlantis were still outside of regular time. More copies had died in his absence, and so the structure resembled a ditrigonal dodecadodecahedron possessing only 24 cells with copies of him living in them. The remaining copies were stronger and lasted a little longer until flukes like brain aneurysms or spontaneous pulmonary emboli claimed them. The Toruvians really weren't all that good at reproducing anything.

…..

They took him to a laboratory early on, where McKay was expected to work on saving the Toruvians from extinction. Not surprisingly, his heart wasn't in his labors. The laboratory was quite near to the village where McKay had sipped juices and eaten sweetcakes before his abduction.

"I will tell you our true history," Dreeson said. "Why we must have you here with us."

McKay smirked because it didn't matter to him one iota.

"You are the most intelligent man of your world. You said so yourself and we have no reason to disbelieve you."

This mattered to him quite a lot, because it was so, so true.

Dreeson showed Rodney dioramas depicting a terrible pandemic. The story told to him and his teammates about controlling estrus was bullshit. The plague affected a great many parts of the body, most especially the testes, where sperm died _in situ_, effectively sterilizing 97 percent of the male population.

"Women carry the virus and male children acquire the disease _in utero_, so you will not be affected by it. This city with its two million is our population in its entirety. We have enough workers to keep us fed and clothed, but we do not have enough genetic diversity. The copies that survive are poor reproducers. We have you, your genetic material, which will serve us well, but we need your knowledge to help us even more."

McKay was shown pictures of the machines that the Toruvians had built to reproduce themselves. The duplicates were stored in polyhedrons, all of a kind together, where they and the original would watch the faulty copies split apart, crumble or simply die. Many were retarded, listless with imbecility.

McKay flinched, remembered his time in the machine and the pain he had experienced. The Toruvians would be putting him in the machine over and over, until they had what they thought were enough copies to save their world.

"Imperfect solution," McKay said, as he recalled seeing several of himself shudder and seize and perish.

"We are trying to improve it," Dreeson said. "But even after so many years perfection eludes us. We believe that you possess sufficiently brilliant genetic material to last many generations before the copies become dull, and also the talent for helping us at this moment to improve our technology."

McKay rubbed his temples irritably. "Okay, so thanks? But your machine is killing me."

"We are attempting to preserve you," Dreeson told him. "You lifespan is so short and we need you for so much."

McKay noticed that the Toruvians, while nice enough compared to the people who usually kidnapped him, possessed nothing that even smelled like common sense.

"You know, Dreeson," he said, not even trying to smooth out the arrogance in his voice. "My friends will notice that I'm missing. Don't you think?"

"They are held outside of time, right now."

"Outside of time?"

"Yes. At the café."

"So they're stuck at the café. And Atlantis?"

"You recall opening the wormhole as we were bidding farewell?"

"Yes."

"We are able to pass on our time flux through the portal. Once a strong and perfect copy is chosen, we will send it back with your team to take your place. Then time will begin again. We hope that he will thrive in Atlantis. If he fails or dies, a beacon under his skin will tell us this. Time will flux and the event will restart until a copy goes through who survives."

McKay thought about that for a while, about what he knew about the nature of time and about how he could control time and memory to save himself.

…..

After the first shooting, while she was in the Wraith cage, Miko overheard the Colonel and Dr. Beckett arguing outside in the hallway.

"This is different!" the military man shouted. "Move aside."

After each shooting, 49.5 hours would pass and then time would reset to 27 hours before Dr. McKay's return. If Miko wasn't killed outright in the gateroom, Dr. Beckett always came to the enclosure to check on her and give her sedatives. Colonel Sheppard came—whether she requested him or not—and stalked around the cage in a silent fury. He and Beckett always became involved in an altercation in the hallway. One time, the Colonel broke the doctor's arm. After that, another doctor came in to give her Haldol and take her blood pressure.

Miko lay on the floor, staring at the light fixture hanging directly above her. She felt the pain of everyone in the city, the sense of loss. Dr. Weir came to the cage one day and watched her for a long time before asking why she'd done it. Most of the time, Miko kept her hands over her face, unable to let anyone see her own sorrow and shame.

Dr. Zelenka, her friend and colleague of many years, came to the cage.

"How could you do this?" he asked, his voice ragged with emotion. "I have lost two friends with one bullet."

The third time Miko had done it, her aim had been off a little and she just managed to fire a second shot before Colonel Sheppard drew his weapon and shot her dead with a bullet in her head. That had been the best time of all. No cage, no tears, no one arguing about whether to treat her kindly or torture her.

…..

Dreeson continued his explanation. "When the faulty copies finish dying, we will attempt to send back a strong one. It will live among your people and be you. No one will know."

McKay rolled his eyes. "You think that some Xerox of me is going to fool anyone?"

This was truly laughable, except that McKay stopped laughing when the first strong copy came to him. The massive polygon had shrunk to a dodecahedron, a three-dimensional, twelve-sided geometric solid, in which the twelve strongest copies lived.

As copies in eleven of the cells slept, one cell lay empty and its contents stood before McKay, resembling him in every way. Same voice, same mannerisms, same everything. For the first time, McKay feared that the Toruvians' ridiculous plan might work. They weren't sending back a cat in his place; they were sending back _him_ in his place. No one would know and forever he'd be stuck here.

"For crying out loud, McKay!" this first copy said. "Don't worry about your experiments. I've got everything up here," and he pointed to his head, which, to McKay, _was_ him.

"You mean my entire consciousness is transferred?"

"Most of it. We miss a piece of you each time, but it doesn't matter."

_Hardly_, he thought. "'It doesn't matter'? Are you stupid? Of course it matters!"

"It's a small, insignificant thing. A detail."

"Details are important. What if you make a mistake and blow up the entire city?

The copy pondered this for a moment. Then he grinned. "In that case, we won't have to worry about hiding your disappearance."

…..

Miko's father had been a small man; her mother, tiny. She had a sister and a brother, both older. From her earliest days she knew that others did not think that she was pretty, even though she wasn't fat and had good skin. Her eyes were larger than most. Each moment after school was taken up with the tutors her mother hired so that she would move on to the best middle-grade school and high school and then to the best college.

Most of her girlfriends slacked off once they got to university. They hoped to marry well and have babies in suburbia. Their husbands, important businessmen, would sleep in shoebox hotels in the city during the week, maybe seek comfort from prostitutes and then come home on the weekends to sleep and ignore their families. Her own father had been cold, distant and never encouraged her to do anything other than help her mother.

Miko had different ideas, grown in the sea of books she had read instead of going out on dates with boys. When she had informed her father that the University of Tokyo had accepted her and she was going there to study, he had grunted and returned to reading the newspaper.

Instead of a businessman, Miko wanted to marry a scientist or a scholar, and she would be well educated and share that with him, so that he would never be bored with her or visit with prostitutes and read manga on the train ride into work. Her extraordinary mind took Miko from Tokyo to America, then to Antarctica and Atlantis, where she had met the Doctor.

Doctor McKay was sharp, rude and patronizing. Sometimes when he stood close by reading over her shoulder, she felt his body heat against her back.

One time she found him sitting in the cafeteria just before dawn. He was drinking coffee so old it moved slowly about his mug, tar-like and bitter.

"It is early, Doctor," she had said.

"It's late, you mean," he'd replied. Then his eyes had shifted away from her to the ocean beyond. Only a few weeks before, he had been on the bottom of the sea, freezing, drowning. She had not tried to speak with him about that terrible time except to say that she was happy that he was back safely.

For a moment, Miko considered doing something very forward, like sitting across from him at the table, admitting how frightened she had been when he was lost to her, to them all. That moment passed when he looked at her, when Miko realized with a shiver that the Doctor might know her thoughts already.

Many months passed between that time in the cafeteria and the night in the lab, when the Doctor left for the evening and then returned as a shadow, talking about time and memory and murder. She would have thought herself mad had not the proof of their encounter been evident from the lump under the skin of her arm, from the little ache there where the memory chip irritated some nerves.

The first time had been the worst, of course, because she did not know whether or not she was sane. Waiting 49.5 hours had almost killed her. She was in the cage and then time reversed itself. The event began for her in the lab on a bright and beautiful morning. Everything progressed from there, going around and around with only Miko aware of how the clocks were being manipulated.

After 27 hours, Miko would go to the gateroom with a gun in her day bag and a brick in her stomach, and wait for him to come through the gate again. He looked and behaved exactly like the Doctor. Miko's hands sweated all over the pistol's grip when she shot him. Then she was taken to the cage again. And they all came to her, one by one, to show her their sorrow, to tell her what she had done to them, even though she knew already.

The fifth time was the first time that she killed him in front of Dr. Zelenka. Doctor McKay had explained about how each time would be a little different. She didn't remember exactly what he'd told her about that—he had spoken so quickly—but things would happen in the preceding 27 hours that would change the scenario because they were going to a new world, because there had been debate before the mission on its purpose and on who would go.

So she had killed him in front of Dr. Zelenka, with whom she was very close.

"How could you do this?" he asked, when he came to see her afterwards.

She shook her head, never lifted her face from her hands.

Another few hours and it would reset.

TBC


	3. Part Three

**Part Three**

McKay realized rather early on that the Toruvians were half-wits whose plan had many brazenly obvious flaws, most notably the ludicrous idea that a copy of him, one that was missing data no less, could pass itself off as the real thing. The imposter had only to brew coffee for everyone in the lab and they'd be all over the place about how strange he was acting.

"What are my hobbies?" he asked the copy—the first strong one—standing before him.

The copy answered, "Blowing up solar systems."

"Right," McKay muttered. "An excellent use of one's spare time, don't you think?"

The copy smiled and nodded. "I will carry on your work on that subject."

"No, no! You can't! It was the worst mistake I ever made!" And he went on to explain his mistake to himself. The copy seemed to understand and agree. But that was an agreement about this instance, this _one thing_. Other problems, situations and crises would arise and McKay would not be there to intervene. So the copy would come up with flawed logic or mathematical errors or some other horror of mind that would prove ruinous to the expedition, to his friends, to his city.

Just as McKay was called upon so often to do, the copy might have to make decisions the moment it came through the gate. Once Dreeson offered a Window to him, McKay pondered deeply with head in hands about how to do it and who would do it—who would kill the copies.

Had he used the Window to contact Elizabeth Weir, she would have wasted his few precious moments with a battery of questions. The Colonel would have gone running back to the planet, gun blazing, only to end up stuck in a time or memory flux, perhaps both. Using his brief Window to communicate with a single individual, McKay would have mere seconds to slip the memory chip under their skin and pass on instructions to be followed without delays, discussion or debate.

McKay chose quickly, entrusting the task to the one person who would believe him and obey him, simply because he told her to.

…..

Although the Toruvians knew that the copies leaving through the stargate were dying, their specific fates remained a mystery. Dreeson and the others assumed that the copies were weaker than supposed. After the third one stilled, McKay was locked into his Toruvian laboratory and questioned.

"You have been working hard on the generator problem for the replication facility. We appreciate your efforts," said his inquisitor, a tall fellow with sharp features and large, deep-set green eyes, one of which drifted to the side.

McKay wrung his hands and wiped sweat off their palms onto his pants legs. "It's a simple problem, actually."

"For you, perhaps. But I am here to discuss another matter. We are disturbed that the people we are sending back in your place seem to be defective. They have all perished. Three times, now. Do you have an explanation for this?"

Not knowing what to say, McKay remained quiet, thinking about the irony of it all.

The person who was not Dreeson came closer. Like all others on the planet, this one resembled many that McKay had seen before. Same eyes, except for the drifting one, same chin, different hair color, maybe.

"I have suspicions that you are trying to find a way back to your people, Doctor. Is my thinking correct on this?"

After so many interrogations on so many worlds, and injuries too numerous to count as a result of them, McKay had come to learn that it sometimes worked best to answer a question with a question of his own.

"Now, how would I do that?" he asked, proud that he was getting much better at evading the truth. Ronon had set a good example; he was good at the whole not-answering thing. McKay missed the big guy a lot all of a sudden.

"That was not my question, Doctor," came the reply.

"Seriously, how would I get home? You have me half a world away from the closest stargate."

"Distance is not an important matter here. We all know that."

The physicist realized that he was still wringing his hands, something that Sheppard, if he were there, would point out as a dead giveaway. McKay missed the Colonel right now, as well, because the soldier, his friend, would tell him to stop doing a lot of things that were now making him look like an awful coward.

…..

The seventh and eighth times she killed the Doctor, the weight of it began lifting. Something besides panic and sorrow started filling her. Another layer floated up, like fat on water, even as she sat in the Wraith cage, scraping flecks of dried blood off her skin and clothing.

After the ninth time, Dr. Beckett came in, as he always did. He sported a black eye and a ragged tear in the shoulder of his uniform.

"You are injured?" she asked.

"Aye, a bit of a scuffle. Nothing serious, of course. Most everyone is…bothered today."

Miko wanted to tell him the truth: She had murdered the same man nine times. Nothing could possibly be worse than that.

"What if I told you that the Doctor would come through the stargate again tomorrow, that he's not dead?"

Beckett was old-school and used a regular cuff and stethoscope to take her blood pressure, rather than an automatic unit. His eyes finished their practiced concentration on the numbers bumping down on the gauge, then he looked up at her. Light eyes, she thought, had the capacity to look astonished. Not like brown ones, eyes like hers, through which the soul could not be seen.

"What are you saying?" he asked.

"I've done this nine times. There will be three more. Tomorrow the wormhole will open and the Doctor will come through again. He will be number ten. I will have to kill him, as well."

On the floor next to her lay Dr. Beckett's jump bag, filled with bandages and with potions to help her sleep. He removed a pulse oximeter from the jump and placed the probe on her right index finger, then pushed a button. Some blinking lights came on and the little machine counted up the numbers: pulse 62, blood oxygen saturation 99. Beckett placed a hand on her wrist, found her radial artery with his right middle finger and noted the rhythm of her heart.

"You're certainly calm," he remarked.

"I am telling the truth. Three more times I will have to kill the Doctor. You won't remember it because time changes back after 49 point five hours."

Tears sprang to his eyes, and the doctor blinked and looked away. Miko realized to her shame that this was all new and terrible for him today. He had lost a good friend in a most horrific way, a colleague with whom he had shared many frightening and wondrous experiences. Killed by her own hand, which even now bore pinpoint droplets of the Doctor's blood.

Beckett noticed the blood, dropped her arm and left the Wraith cage without looking back.

…..

Each night they left McKay alone for about a half-hour so that he could pray. He was, of course, religiously agnostic, and some of the early copies had known this. Fortunately, only one copy with this particular morsel of knowledge survived into the strongest twelve, and it had died either second or third through the gate.

McKay lived now in a regular dodecahedron, a 12-sided polygon. The eleventh McKay was in the café, getting ready to pass through the gate to Atlantis. Rodney wondered whether the copy of himself was at all frightened. The twelfth watched him closely from his cell.

McKay used his half-hour to think about going home, giving his full attention to the problems of how to get to the gate, how to dial home, go through without using an IDC and so forth. He considered asking for more time with Miko, not that he held out any hope that his request would be granted. His most recent interrogation by the Toruvians had ended badly, with threats of another replication session before the recommended lag time ended. The first session had almost killed him; another so soon would surely complete the job, not that the Toruvians were intelligent enough to realize this.

His half-hour over, the privacy curtain around him cleared. The twelfth copy smiled.

"I know what you're thinking," it said.

Surprised, McKay stared at…himself. "Oh, yeah? This could be a great game. Let's play 'What Am I Thinking?'"

"Let's not," his duplicate shot back from the miniscule space in which he was kept.

McKay suffered from claustrophobia and, looking at the thing that resembled himself shifting in its stiflingly cocoon, his back teeth ground against each other with anxiety.

"Agreed," McKay nodded. "Tell me about yourself."

The copy stood up in its enclosure. "I have nothing to say that you don't already know. I'm you. I'm the last copy, the best one, and there is no difference."

"We're exactly the same in every way?"

"Yes, of course. That's why I'm going to be the one who survives. And you know what?"

Almost afraid of the answer, McKay looked at him inquiringly.

"I know what you're up to. Have known from the beginning, since I would have done the same thing myself."

McKay crossed protective arms over his chest. A bounding pulse throbbed behind his eyes.

"Done what? You might know me but you can't read my mind."

"Idiot! I _have_ your mind!'

Angry, now, McKay balked. "You are a copy. You're imperfect!"

"I am the best one, a perfect thing. So, listen: When I go back I'm going to kill whoever you have there who is taking us down. Is it Sheppard? You might as well tell me now. If I can, I'll just wound him, cripple him so he can't get to me."

"I was told that going through the gate makes you forget things. If I tell you anything, _not_ that I have anything to say, you'll forget it the moment you enter the event horizon."

"I'm clever. I'll find some way to remember. Perhaps I'll go back with a memory chip. Isn't that what you would do? Try to find one and hope it works once you've passed through the gate into Atlantis?"

Sweat sprang up on McKay's forehead, as if a small river flowed just under his skin, ready to rise to the surface at the slightest provocation. Always, his body betrayed him! "No one on the other side is helping me. You are all seriously flawed and are dying in stupid, moronic ways."

"You don't believe that."

McKay chucked in spite of himself. "Sure I do. The tenth one probably shot itself by accident on the firing range."

"Someone is killing us."

"No."

"I know when you're lying."

"I'm not lying and you are not perfect because you can't be copied yourself. They told me that. It would taint the generations that come later."

"Wrong, wrong and, again wrong! I _am_ perfect. Nothing's missing, nothing's broken. The line could be preserved through me without any problems."

"Then why not stay here? Why risk dying in Atlantis? It's much safer…" McKay's voice failed him. His own logic had come full circle and slapped him in the face. If anything, he should have faked ecstatic happiness with the Toruvians, encouraged the twelfth copy to run through the gate and cause whatever havoc he desired. All of it would resolve when McKay himself managed to come through. He hoped so, anyway.

An expert game theorist, McKay knew the probabilities of winning against an opponent with whom he was equally matched. He suddenly felt like a poker player flapping his cards around for everyone to see. In his mind, he tucked his hand back towards his chest. But the damage was done.

…..

The eleventh one came through. Miko walked up to him and said nothing. Just pulled the trigger, twice this time, to the head this time, as well, and didn't even flinch. She kept her eyes open. Dr. Weir was in the gateroom with Teyla, again. Zelenka stood beside Doctor McKay. The Czech was splattered with red and with pinkish grey. He became pale, removed his blood-streaked glasses and passed out. There was considerable confusion at first over whether or not Zelenka had been shot, but Miko knew that all of these extremely intelligent people would eventually figure that out for themselves.

…..

Teyla stood just inside the door to the room in which the Wraith cage was kept. Ronon was with her, leaning against the wall with his long arms folded across his chest. Miko sat on the floor curled into a tight ball, her forehead resting on drawn-up knees.

"We have been praying in his quarters," the Athosian said. When Miko failed to react, Teyla stepped closer. "I believe that all living things possess a spirit and that it is possible to guide that spirit to a peaceful eternal home. The Colonel doesn't believe in spirits, but Ronon does. Do you, Dr. Kusanagi?"

Miko's shoulders shook in misery and Teyla felt glad that that was happening and very sad that it wouldn't change anything.

"We have been in Dr. McKay's quarters for two days and have completed the Rite, but we do not feel that we can stop, yet. Once we know why you have done this, perhaps then we can move on."

She approached the cage.

"The Wraith kill to eat. Others wish to have power or are jealous. Tell me why you have taken Dr. McKay from us."

Miko raised her head and stared at Teyla through the limp, greasy bangs that fell over her face. Her lips trembled as she tried to sculpt words with them.

"He told me to do it," she said. "He came to the laboratory and planted a chip in my arm…" Barely containing her outrage, the petite scientist stood and lifted her shirtsleeve, exposing the thin red line, a mere scratch to someone ignorant of its meaning. "This, look, he gave me! The Doctor said that I must kill him twelve times and that each time it would seem like the first to you. You can not move on? Neither can I until it is done!"

And then Teyla backed up as Miko hurled herself at the side of the cage, only to be repulsed by the force shield she had helped to calibrate. It threw her down and she stayed there, seemingly lost in her madness.

Teyla turned to be let out of the room.

"Don't let her fool you," Ronon said, his eyes never leaving the woman now sprawled on the floor.

Teyla paused and looked behind her. She had come there wanting answers and hoping to feel compassion. Having failed at both, she told herself that either would have been a bitter victory.

"She may have injured herself," she told the guards. Then, turning to Ronon, she said, "I will not come here again."

Ronon nodded and walked with her as they progressed through the hallway to their usual place.

…..

"Pardon?" the diplomat asked, tilting her head as if hear better.

"I have to kill him again tomorrow," she told Dr. Weir, who was there outside the cage the eleventh time. Miko had decided to tell anyone who would listen. Since no one believed her, spilling everything allowed her to get it off her chest without affecting anything else. In this, Doctor McKay had been wrong, and maybe when he returned she would find the courage to tell him so.

Dr. Weir always came to see her by herself. The Colonel always had two people guarding him. Dr. Zelenka came alone, as well, but Teyla and Ronon viewed her as a team. Strangely enough, Dr. Heightmeyer never came to see her at all.

"The last copy of him will come through the gate in…" she looked at her watch. "Thirty-three hours. You won't remember this when I shoot him. It will be new to you then. There are six hours left in this time. Then there will be 27 hours in the next before he comes through."

Apparently not listening—or not understanding—Dr. Weir dropped her head. She placed her hand to her face. Miko stopped talking and watched Dr. Weir standing there, hiding like that. A teardrop fell onto the floor, making a tiny, tiny sound.

People listened but did not hear her. They came in all the time with their "Why? "Why?" "Why?" and sputtering "How could you?" and "Do you feel our pain?" as if she were not sitting on the floor of a cage experiencing her own agony, as if she felt nothing at all.

She told Dr. Weir, "He will come through and I will kill him again, just like he told me to. This next one will be the last copy. If I am not killed in the gateroom, you will put me here in the cage. Then the real Doctor will come through. He will find some way to bring himself home from P3X-473. That is what the Doctor told me. After the twelfth copy, the real Doctor will come home."

Her eyes puffy and red, Dr. Weir looked up and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.

"Then what will happen?" she asked.

Miko twisted her fingers around. She didn't know what to say.

…..

A short while after Miko's confession to Dr. Weir, the Colonel came storming into the cage. Miko had been dozing in a Haldol cloud, worlds away from the serial killings that had replaced her blood with sand. The Colonel hollered an indescribable sound, something like a bellow, something like a cry of pain, and grabbed her by the arms, hauling her up to his face.

"What is this bullshit!"

Miko looked at him, surprised that she could actually _feel_ surprised anymore. He shook her violently, until she squirmed in his steely grip. The chip in her arm rubbed against the muscles there. He held her very tightly, as tightly as he had while strangling her that one time, and she feared that he was going to choke her to death again.

"Tell me!"

She said nothing, but turned her head away and began crying again in helpless torment. Some military people came into the room, armed with guns and the thin-barreled rifles used for shooting tranquilizer darts, followed by the doctor, who was even more disheveled than when she had seen him earlier.

"Colonel Sheppard, no one wants to take you down. Let her go."

She wiggled her sore arm in his grasp. She was afraid that the chip would come out on its own, and she would forget all of this, that no one would remember about the twelfth one.

Sheppard loosened his grip but the rage never left his eyes. "What is that?" he asked, feeling the lump in her arm, the sharp edge poking against his palm.

Miko realized that everything could fall apart. They would find the chip and remove it. She would forget, and the plan would die so close to the end of it. This was her doing; she should have never revealed anything to Dr. Weir.

"Don't touch me! Leave me alone!" Miko pushed the Colonel away, resisting the urge to clutch at her sore arm, to draw attention to it. "He is…" she pointed to her attacker. "He is assaulting me." She was smart but not wily. "He's been after me for a long time. He wants to be my lover," she said, discovering that she was fairly good at making up stories. "He is upset because he knows that I love someone else."

The room fell silent. They looked at her messy hair, at her bloody, rumpled clothing. The Colonel backed away, hands held up in surrender. Miko wrapped her arms around herself, feeling her ribs sticking out under thin skin. Some men found that sort of thing attractive, a lot of bones, no fat, no flesh to grasp. Her skin was nice, her eyes larger than most. It was possible.

"You're crazy," Colonel Sheppard said, defensively. He looked over at Beckett, at the guards standing stiff with dread, their firearms ready. "Do you see this?" he asked them.

They waited quietly, as if praying the incident would resolve on its own.

Sheppard exhaled. He turned and walked out into the hallway. He and Dr. Beckett had already had a couple of scuffles so far that time; Miko hoped that there would not be any additional altercations between the two. Their relationship was so strained, she wondered whether they had had disagreements of other sorts before this hideous series of events began.

The two men stood in the hallway. Colonel Sheppard rubbed the back of his neck. Dr. Beckett said, "I can give you something for the pain, Colonel." Sheppard paused and, just as the door closed, Miko saw him shake his head and say, "Not this kind."

Time changed just then…

…as 49.5 hours after killing Dr. McKay for the eleventh time became 27 hours before killing Dr. McKay for the twelfth time. Miko sat at one of the lab tables, dressed in a clean blue shirt and tan trousers, with her white lab coat on and buttoned as high as it would go. It had yet to be sullied with blood and tissue and bits of bone. Her name was stitched in red block letters above the left breast pocket.

…..

Dr. Miko Kusanagi prepared herself for today's task. Like all the other times, the lab was full of its usual complement of blinking machinery, spring-arm lamps and whirring computers. Each time something was a little bit different—a datapad left out or a new set of equations on the whiteboard. The only constant was that the Doctor was away with a team through the stargate and that he would return 27 hours hence.

As usual, Miko went to her quarters, where she lay on her bed trying to sleep. Then she washed and dressed and walked over to the mess in case she felt like eating. Nearly 40 days had passed like this, with no variation, always the same.

This was to be the last time Miko would have to kill him. All of the other times were starting to blur inside her head. Had she been shot by Major Lorne after the fourth time or after the third? Once Doctor McKay had managed to say something before he died, but she couldn't remember which time that had been, only that he had said it to Ronon.

Killing the Doctor was easier by now, of course. First she'd felt horror, then sadness, then resignation and, finally, a bone-weary defeat. She had done exactly as he had instructed, simply because he had told her to do it. He was in his own world, doing whatever it was that he needed to do to get back to her time and place. Still she'd accepted this responsibility with a blind devotion that had cooled off long ago, maybe after the seventh time or the ninth. She couldn't remember that anymore, either.

…..

McKay felt downright scared. The twelfth one knew what was going on, learning as he went along, as he stood in his cell, watching his benefactor's every movement. If he were not an exact copy, a perfect match in every way, then he was damned close. So close that no one back in Atlantis would be able to tell them apart.

And this one knew what to expect when he came though the gate.

They caught each other looking over into the cell formerly occupied by the eleventh copy. Then the twelfth called in the Keyman, and asked him to unlock their cells so that McKay and his best copy could stand together for the first and only time.

The Keyman did as asked and then left. When the two were within feet of each other, wearing the same clothing at the same time, the copy addressed the original.

"I've been thinking about what you told me," he said.

"About what?" McKay responded warily.

"I knew you'd ask me that question."

McKay bristled. "Why? Because you made such a gapingly open-ended remark or because you can read my mind?"

"I've already told you that I don't _read_ your mind. I _have_ your mind."

"Yes, well. Okay. I'll repeat my question: What have you been thinking about?"

"What you said. That you have no one over on the other side killing off my brothers."

McKay waited.

"My creators believe that you are the key to reenergizing the genetic fortitude of the Toruvian people."

"I'm flattered."

Twelve smirked. "Don't be. There's so little genetic diversity right now that a guitar major at Oberlin would be a breath of reproductive fresh air. Sure, they're looking for the smartest people they can find…steal…whatever, and you walked right into that situation with your eyes closed, didn't you?"

"Your point, if you have one?"

"I've decided to stay here. I'm the last copy, the best one. I want to be the one from whom they take cuttings, the one they use to solve problems and to reproduce. So tomorrow you're going back through the stargate—to meet the fate that I would have met."

McKay turned away. He always threw every little feeling onto his face. Thank God the back of his head showed nothing.

"You can't do that. Dreeson and the rest know I'm the real one!"

"How?"

"Well, they'll…there's…"

"I am a perfect copy of you. You're a perfect copy of me. The Keyman allowed us to be in here together because he is a poor copy. He is stupid and didn't think that we can't be distinguished from each other. No matter what you say, no one will believe you. You will go through and not remember what is to happen. Sheppard will kill you, just like he killed all of the others. It is Sheppard, correct?"

"Sheppard's as clueless as anyone else there," McKay replied, rubbing his thumbs and forefingers together anxiously.

"Or Ronon, perhaps? At any rate, someone will kill you. But I ask you to consider the alternative. Which do you prefer?"

"Alternative? What are you talking about?"

The twelfth copy smiled broadly, in a way that McKay himself had not smiled in his entire life.

"What I spoke of before. My going through and killing Sheppard or Ronon—maybe both of them—when I get there."

"Don't be ridiculous. You'd be jailed for murder."

The copy held up a small object, a flux chip in perfect working order. "I have a device that alters time and memory. It would be very useful in this situation, would it not? With this I could kill anyone and turn around time and thought to cast blame on anyone I chose. So either I go to Atlantis and kill Sheppard and Ronon, or you go back and die in my place."

To his horror, McKay realized the flaw in this—the best and the strongest—copy of all.

TBC


	4. Part Four

**Part Four**

Miko had gone off world many times with exploratory teams. She enjoyed this much more than did Dr. Zelenka, who preferred the predictable routine and relative safety of the laboratory.

In preparation for her off-world assignments, Miko had learned how to shoot a pistol. She was semi-literate in the art of hand-to-hand combat, as well. Not that she enjoyed it. Touching other people made her uncomfortable. Shooting them was really the way to go if someone were threatening her.

"I would like to use a nine millimeter Beretta for target practice this morning, please."

The armory had one clerk on day shift. His name was Lt. Curtis Wilson. He was 26 years old and thought he knew everything. Without a word, he handed the pistol, a box of shells and a dozen paper targets to Dr. Kusanagi. She signed her name on the pad that Curtis held out to her, thanked him and walked to the firing range. Lt. Wilson promptly forgot about Miko. She was quiet and nice and easily ignored.

Miko spent the next while shooting holes in paper. Her aim had improved since she began murdering people. Once six targets had been used, the small scientist put the loaded pistol and the rest of the ammunition in her day bag. The paper targets she threw in the trash.

This was to be the last time; the next time, her Doctor McKay would return through the gate and liberate the memory chip from her arm. Then she would forget the past 38 days and all of the suffering that she had caused. A frisson of anticipation ran up her spine. More than anything, she wanted to forget.

Like most every morning, Miko walked the halls of Atlantis watching the day begin. Dr. Zelenka, Dr. Kavanaugh, and all of the other scientists discussed their work over breakfast. They laughed into their coffee mugs and enjoyed each other's company when they ate together.

That would all come to an end when the stargate activated. She would put a stop to whatever everyone was doing that day. She had done this eleven times and today would be the last.

"Incoming wormhole," the control room technician said, just as he had done eleven times before.

The stargate effervesced and settled into itself. First Sheppard come through, then Teyla and Doctor McKay, followed by Ronon. Today the Doctor spoke to no one, just continued towards the stairs that would take him to Dr. Weir's office. He wore a puzzled expression, not at all unusual.

"Dr. McKay, please wait," Miko called, following him. One other time he had made it to the steps, had actually started climbing them, in fact, when the bullet felled him.

The Doctor paused. He held a piece of paper, which dropped to the floor. He fiddled with his cuff, reaching in under it as if he had an itch. Coming closer, Kusanagi noticed that he was actually working at this quite frantically, his face tight.

"Kusanagi. What." He was distracted, fearful and operating at the cusp of panic. "I have to…give me a minute!" He kept moving excitedly, shoving his sleeve up to his elbow, turning around and around. It would not be possible to get a clean shot until the Doctor stopped all of this. "Damn it!" and with that McKay released his pack, unzipped his jacket and quickly pulled it off. Then he plucked from the lining of one sleeve a small thing that Miko could not see. He held the thing with shaking hands, then, taking a breath to steady himself, shoved it under the skin of his left bicep, hissing in pain.

With a gasp, McKay's head whipped up. He stared at Miko, his eyes wide, mouth open, as if he were watching a shark fin approaching him as he floated in the ocean. She didn't think about his alarm. She knew only that this was the twelfth time, as she reached into her day bag.

"Miko, don't…" he said, ineffectually grabbing at her arms. His heart must have been beating very fast, for he was panting loudly.

Miko twisted out of his way. "Doctor, I am sorry…"

"No, it's me. It's McKay. I swear it." He could barely speak with fear, and stumbled on the steps, trembling clumsily.

After eleven times, Miko was quite adept at shooting quickly and accurately. She retrieved the weapon that Lt. Curtis Wilson had handed to her without thinking earlier that morning. With efficiency borne of practice, Dr. Miko Kusanagi shot the Doctor, again.

…..

McKay stumbled on the steps, his legs turning to jelly, his lungs wheezing with injury and fear. He had been shot a bunch of times, usually with a Wraith stunner, sometimes with worse things. What was so strangely different about this time was Miko's expressionless face looking down at him, a face that didn't even flinch when she pulled the trigger.

He shuddered when the slug entered his body. The small chunk of metal was so blazingly hot that it felt cold when it first tracked through his flesh. The impact drove him solidly to the floor and shut him down right then and right there.

…..

Miko threw aside the gun. Prematurely, as it turned out. Although she had shot him point blank in the chest—she much preferred this to shooting him in the head—the Doctor was still breathing. For a moment it seemed as if he were going to speak, but nothing came out of his mouth but a bit of pink foam and a few agonal grunts. Remembering the time she had died slowly, Miko wished that there was time to pick up the gun, put another bullet in the Doctor's chest and end it quickly for him because, even after all of this, she was not without mercy.

His arms twitched a little. Watching his fingers jerking as shock set in, Miko noticed the smallest thing: The piece of paper that he'd been holding lay next to him on the steps. It was covered with tiny printing which she recognized as the Doctor's. The lines were very close together, as if he had much to say with only one small sheet on which to say it.

Doctor McKay gasped several times. The sound seemed tremendously loud within the silence of the gateroom and all of the stunned people in there. Security descended upon her and the process repeated itself. Ronon picked up the Doctor and started towards the infirmary. The Colonel and Teyla followed him. Blood dripped all over the floor and the Colonel stepped in it by accident, tracking red boot prints as he walked.

…..

Radek Zelenka re-read the note. He had gone over it so many times that parts were committed to memory. One sheet of paper covered with Rodney's tiny, unusually neat handwriting, carefully explaining everything from most important to least.

"_Memory chip in jacket lining! Place under skin, left arm!!_" he had written first in letters larger than the rest.

"_I was abducted and cloned via a rapid-growth process outside of normal space and time…_"

"_The Toruvians are able to manipulate time, space and memory through the stargate and small implants. No one in Atlantis noticed that time had stopped or reversed itself…_"

"_I have stolen a memory chip and will try to activate it just after I come through…_"

"_Dr. Kusanagi has been killing the copies…_"

These were answers to questions that no one had asked, yet.

Radek stood outside the Wraith cage, watching Miko sitting cross-legged on the floor with her sweet, intelligent face buried in her hands.

Elizabeth had come to Radek's lab with the note shortly after the shooting. Her hand shook as she handed the paper to him.

"Is this possible?" she'd asked.

When he was done reading, Radek had leaned back on his stool, rubbed his eyes and imagined what it must have been like for Rodney to be split apart and to live in the shifting polyhedron. At last Radek had leveled his gaze at Dr. Weir.

"Anything is possible," he'd said.

"But this?" She gestured towards the paper.

"If Rodney says that it is true…"

"And what do you think?"

"I think that…If Rodney says it is true, then…"

Elizabeth had been standing with her arms crossed, tensed up like someone waiting for a diagnosis. Now she unfurled her long limbs and snatched the note from his hands.

"If you're not going to help…"

She had left the lab in a temper, left Radek Zelenka sitting on his high stool, where he stayed until he'd had time to think about the contents of the note.

Now he stood before Dr. Kusanagi with the note he'd retrieved from Elizabeth, who had apologized and looked like she needed a drink.

"Miko, I will read to you some of what Dr. McKay has written. It explains many things." And he began to read about the memory chips and the copies and how she was killing them.

He said to his good friend. "If this is true then you have had a hard time with it."

"That wasn't the Doctor," she responded. "That was a copy and next time will be the real one."

Zelenka ran a hand over his face.

"It will not happen that way. The last copy chose to stay behind. He sent Rodney through instead…"

He stopped himself because Miko's hands had left her face and a look of utter devastation distorted her features. She stood up rapidly, staggering a little bit before finding her balance.

"What?" she whispered, so airlessly it sounded as if spoken by an insect.

"Rodney came through this last time. I'm sorry, you could not have known."

"You are saying that I shot Dr. McKay. The real one."

"Yes, I am afraid that you did, but I must tell you…"

He stopped again just then because Dr. Kusanagi had passed out cold…

…..

Rodney McKay regained consciousness and wondered where all of him were this time.

The previous year, Teyla had fallen ill with a high fever that Carson had been unable to keep under control. McKay had stayed with her night and day, holding her hand and holding and holding it because he feared losing her so much. Now, without even opening his eyes, he realized that the tables had turned, that Teyla held his hand in hers and that he remembered the feel of it so well.

"Rodney," she said, when he squeezed back.

McKay could not find the strength to open his eyes and certainly could not speak around the vent that breathed for him, but he knew that his friends were with him, heard Ronon summon Carson and felt that Sheppard was there.

Time passed and McKay relaxed into a lazy pattern of waking and sleeping and waking up again, occasionally fighting panic when he realized that he had forgotten something but could not remember what. The note contained all of the pertinent information he could fit onto it.

"Doctor McKay, this is Dr. Kusanagi. Is it really you?"

Then he remembered that in his haste it had been all about the science and that he had forgotten to mention one small human matter.

…..

Finally released from the Wraith cage, Miko came to see the Doctor. He lay swathed in bandages, fighting the vent. Teyla stood beside him, speaking softly, her hand unabashedly wiping the tears sliding down the sides of his face. The Doctor was crying in his half-sleep, ready to have the vent removed and breathe on his own. Miko said nothing and did not try to touch him.

Miko needed the chip removed. It seemed to crawl around beneath her skin, switching channels in her brain. There was the first time she shot him and the one after that. The last time, when Dr. Zelenka came to see her, when he explained about her shooting the real Doctor McKay. There were the times in between, when she took a bullet herself and died in the gateroom, and the few times that Miko had had to shoot the Doctor twice in order to kill him.

Dr. Zelenka said that the chip would come out soon, after she had written her report, so that everyone but her would remember. He didn't realize that Miko could never bring herself to write about this. Her fingernails were clipped short. If Dr. Beckett didn't remove the chip soon, she would find a tool and dig it out.

Teyla and Miko were shooed into the hallway while Dr. Beckett extubated the Doctor. They waited together in uncomfortable silence. Both were small women, but Teyla seemed much, much larger with her sinewy, athletic build. Miko tried not to look at her…

…Then the Athosian disappeared and people and objects shifted in space and in time. They didn't—wouldn't—notice, of course. They never had all the twelve times this had happened before.

Dr. Zelenka was wrong. Miko had shot the twelfth copy after all and now, at last, at last, her Doctor McKay was coming home!

TBC


	5. Part Five

**Part Five**

It was some hours ago. Not the usual 27 or even 49.5. The gate had been activated and Colonel Sheppard's team was just now returning from P3X-463. The Colonel, Ronon and Teyla ignored her as they walked past, for Miko meant nothing to them as she hurried to the gateroom.

Sunlight streaming in through the beautiful windows illuminated the Doctor as he busied himself on the steps. He surely was the real one and he would know her and talk to her and thank her for what she'd done. He would write his report and insist her chip be removed so she wouldn't see herself killing him anymore.

"Doctor McKay," she said, fully expecting to have to say only that.

"Miko," he responded, not looking up. He fussed with his pack, his laptop, as if he hadn't a moment to waste with her.

She remained quiet, respectfully waiting for him to finish his important task. Then she would tell him about the twelfth one who had survived, who, surprisingly, was still present after time re-looped itself. Miko had glimpsed him lying in his infirmary bed, still unconscious but extubated, before she started for the gateroom.

Finishing with his pack, Doctor McKay rose and began walking away. This was a momentous day, so of course he was preoccupied.

"Doctor, please wait."

"What? Why?" He was almost looking at her, almost seeing her.

"You have returned. I am happy that you are back."

"Thanks." He shifted his feet, rushing her the way he always did. "Anything else?"

"I presume you will want to report to Dr. Weir right away to tell her what has happened."

The Doctor looked around the gateroom, seemingly trying to pull the appropriate words from the air. Miko thought that she might be annoying him, trying to tell him his job, but the matter of the chip had reached the screaming point in her mind and she could wait no longer to mention it.

"You must remove it right away." This she needed more than anything.

He looked confused for a moment, then waved a dismissive hand. "I'll do it in a little while."

He started away again but she blocked his path, extraordinarily bold for her, a measure of her desperation.

"No. You must do it now."

He offered an angry chuckle, as if she were a dog pestering him for kitchen scraps.

"Just run along, Miko! I'll come and get you when I'm done and we'll discuss it then."

"We have nothing to discuss. Take it out right now. I can't stand to have it in for another minute."

McKay stepped around her and continued to walk, picking up the pace. Miko watched his back for a few moments. The thin partition between love and hate and necessity and choice came down then.

He had forgotten about her, about what she had done for him and about the horrendous gift that he had shoved under her skin. She felt hot from anger, from grief, and ran up ahead to face him.

"You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

The Doctor said, "I'm tired from this last mission. It must have slipped my mind."

Miko believed him for a moment because he looked away from her, typically distracted and too busy to listen to anything she said, just like every other day.

"There is important news, Doctor. One did not die. The last one that came through survived."

"He's still alive?"

"Yes, in the infirmary, but very sick…"

This time he looked directly at her, and through his large, clear eyes Miko saw that it wasn't her Doctor after all.

She tapped her headset. "I need Security…"

The Doctor—the copy. How had this happened?—grabbed her thin arm and pulled her to him. He held her very close, his shadow eclipsing her small frame. Squeezing her wrist tight enough to make her hand puff up and turn purple, he leaned in close to her ear. "Come along."

Miko's headset thrummed with Major Lorne's queries. "Whoever requested Security, please respond. What is your location?" The Doctor's double reached up and pulled the unit from her ear. He was not a particularly strong man, but his small co-worker was easily bested by him.

She knew where they were going, what he was going to do there. She twisted her body, kicked and screamed and tried to scratch him. But the imposter pushed her against a wall and pressed his hand to her throat until her larynx ached from the pressure. His face came very close to hers. Miko found herself blushing and embarrassed for that.

"Don't try anything," he whispered. Then he dragged her away from the wall and pushed her to continue. "McKay hasn't happened, yet, so if I can get rid of him within a time flux no one will notice."

Throughout all of this, the copy brought up his hand and quickly rubbed his upper arm, where a memory chip would be if he had one. Each motion to his arm cleared the hallway of any people walking there, watching them. It backed up the sunlight streaming through windows, but for Miko and the not-Doctor with her there, nothing changed for them, for what they knew and for what he was doing to her.

"How are you remembering?" he demanded. "Did he give you a chip? Huh, Miko?" He stopped and shook her, making her hair fly around and fall into her face. With a cool, pale hand, he smoothed her hair back, which made her want to cry for all of the things that she had needed but had never received.

His harsh tones softened. "You wouldn't remember if Sheppard had killed him because by now time would have re-set and the memories of it would be gone."

With more gentleness than she thought he would give her, the Doctor unbuttoned Miko's pristine white lab coat and slid it down off her arms. She trembled as he touched her, even when he grasped her left arm and looked at the lump under the skin, pushed with his thumb at the thing buried there. The skin had healed nicely during the past month, but she flinched when he pressed down.

"Clever," said the Doctor. He looked at her face, at the streams of tears sweeping down her cheeks. "I can see why he chose you."

They continued through the hall. There was the Colonel. The Doctor rubbed his arm and the hallway re-set. No Colonel. There were Sgt. Ruiz from Los Angeles and Dr. Suri Veerippan from New Delhi, both in shorts and t-shirts, fresh from a long run. Re-set and they were gone. Re-set, re-set, re-set, with the sun in a holding pattern, its movement strangled by a caress to his arm.

At last the infirmary entrance came into view. A few caresses later and there was the Doctor, her Doctor, the one who had somehow survived what eleven others had not.

McKay lay sleeping, helpless in a small private room off the main ward. Although she didn't think it possible after all that McKay had made her do, Miko felt sorry for him. The twelfth copy pulled her over to the Doctor's bedside. He stood with his thoughts for a few moments, remembering to re-set when people approached. He reached out and touched his progenitor's arm, looking for and finding the memory chip within.

"I was right—again. He stole a chip for himself. No wonder he's still here." Turning to Miko, he looked at her appraisingly and said, "I can only imagine what he's put you through."

The twelfth McKay then strode to a nearby linen cart and removed a pillow from it. This he handed to Miko. She felt the stiff, scratchy covering under her fingers, the light squishiness of the pillow itself. This was so different from the weight of the pistol, the hard handle and the smooth trigger that she had stroked with her fingertip so often lately.

The McKay standing beside her gestured towards the sleeping man. "Go ahead. You want this as much as I do." Re-set. "Do it." Re-set. "I really don't have all day." Re-set.

She held up the pillow so that its shadow fell over the Doctor's sleeping form, over his slack face. Re-set, re-set.

"Do it and we can move on," the perfect copy said, his breath tickling her ear. "I will give you what you want, what you need. That's a promise." He placed his hand on her back, which made her shiver. "Once he is gone, we will be the only ones who know any of this. Together we will keep our secret." And he rubbed her back harder, moving his palm in a sensuous pattern that made her feel flushed and hungry and pathetically weak. As he spoke, he re-set, re-set to take away the memories of anyone watching them.

Miko leaned so close to the Doctor that she could see his eyelashes twitching as he reclaimed a tiny fragment of awareness, close enough to see his eyes open to paper-thin slits, dilated but still showing the blue that made them transparent enough to spy within.

The other McKay grew impatient as he busied himself with re-setting and re-setting. The nurse who came out of the supply room and noticed them at the Doctor's bedside, came out again and again, always having just enough time to register the strangeness of one McKay in the bed and another McKay standing up over him. Then she was re-set back a half-minute or a minute or two.

"Miko, I'm counting on you. I can't re-set time and suffocate someone simultaneously."

Everything was backing up and backing up and Miko remembered everything, the eleven that she had killed, the twelfth that survived and all of the people who came to the cage to ask her why and how could she do this and did she know of their pain. There was Dr. Zelenka and then Dr. Weir and Ronon and Teyla, and she saw the Colonel, his handsome features made ferocious with outrage, strangling her until she died. On the bed lay the person who had made all of this happen to her. The chip ached inside her arm.

"If I do this, you will keep it there forever," she said.

McKay's copy was busy with another re-set. He didn't notice that she had spoken, just like always in the lab, just like every other day.

Miko threw the pillow aside and looked up at the copy's familiar face, so beautiful even now. He watched the pillow fly through the air and land on the floor some distance away.

"Miko—" he warned.

She said, "I have to do this."

He gave her that look, that patronizing, distracted look that she had seen eleven times already, so different from the frightened recognition of the real one.

"Do what? What the hell are you talking about?"

"I need to," she said, blinking to clear the tears enough so that it could happen, so that she could rest. Her hands crept around his waist and then up his sides and over his chest and his neck, until she cupped his face. He said nothing but placed his hands on her hips, holding her close that way. Her thumbs grazed his high forehead and she pushed back several unruly hairs at his crown. His blue eyes watched her, stared into her dark-brown ones, which hid everything from him. Then she let one hand slide down his side, feeling a little softness around his middle, which thinned out at the hip. She felt the hard protrusion at the widest point of his pelvis, the iliac crest, just under the webbing of his belt.

"I love you," she said, without shame.

His breath hitched in surprise, as her hand traveled down along the side of his leg, meeting the leather holster and deftly prying up the snap.

With the same skill that she had used for forty days, when she had killed and killed and watched the grief play out for 49.5 hours and 49.5 hours, she pulled McKay's 9mm from the thigh holster where he kept it, shoved it into his chest and fired.

He fell to the floor, and Miko Kusanagi allowed herself to go with him. They were so close, embracing, his last breaths on her face, his blood bubbling out over the hand that still held the gun against his body. His arms relaxed their grip around her, then fell away, lifeless. In her daydreams, Miko had wondered what it would feel like to lie with Doctor McKay. She never thought it would happen like this.

Kusanagi slid the bloody gun across the floor, leaned over and pushed at the chip in the slain doctor's arm. Re-set for time, re-set to end this. Then she scampered up and rifled through a nearby cabinet. In the top drawer lay a scalpel, wrapped in a sterile slip. She ripped off the wrapper, slid the blade into the sleeve of the doctor's jacket and drew down until all of the layers of clothing over the site of the implant had been cut away. Then, grimacing, for she was not fond of medicine or things that bleed, Miko plunged the tip of the scalpel into his skin and pried out the memory chip. It was covered with blood and small pieces of tissue. That didn't matter because the important thing was to make certain that no one ever pulled back time again, that the pain and the horror resumed their natural course from this moment on. Miko laid the chip on the floor and crushed it beneath her boot.

There would be no more re-sets.

The nurse exiting the storage closet saw the dead person on the floor and Miko crouching beside him. Miko felt relieved that this time someone else was screaming.

Dr. Beckett and several others ran into the room and stared in disbelief, for Doctor McKay lay dead on the floor and in the bed lay another McKay, straining behind an oxygen mask, suffering from a serious injury. Dr. Miko Kusanagi sat between the two McKays rubbing blood off her hands with a Sani-Cloth. She knew that this looked very bad indeed. If both McKays died, she would never be able to explain herself.

In the seconds before Security overwhelmed her, Miko saw Dr. Beckett race to McKay's bedside, while another assessed the Doctor on the floor.

"He's dead," the other doctor said.

Beckett placed his stethoscope against the bedridden Doctor's chest.

"Possible PE," he said.

Major Lorne's rough hands pressed against Miko's sore arm as he lead her away, his eyes bouncing from one McKay to the other. One man was dead, one appeared to be dying. If she could, Miko would have re-set once again, just long enough to grab the gun and put a 9mm bullet in her head. That's what she wanted, right then: To pull the trigger one last time.

…..

Forty-nine point five hours passed more slowly than ever before. Kusanagi sat in the Wraith cage, her knees pulled up under her chin, her hands folded primly down around her ankles. Her tailbone was getting sore, so she did not rock this time. She heard her wristwatch ticking in the silent room. The cell door opened. Dr. Beckett came in looking tired but, just like the day before, without bruises on his face or rips in his uniform. The force shield was turned off and the doctor entered the cage.

"How are you feeling, lass?"

She nodded.

"I'll just get your vital signs. Do you need anything? Food, perhaps? I know you haven't eaten."

Miko shook her head. The anguish had been wrung out of her until she was dry.

He handed her some bottled water, which she accepted. "It won't be long now. You'll be out of here soon, so don't worry. Procedure. Paper work, you understand."

She looked at Beckett and tilted her head. It was almost 49.5 hours, but he wouldn't know that. In a flash, she understood.

"The Doctor is alive?"

"Yes, thankfully. He came to a couple of hours ago and told us everything."

"He is the real one?"

"Aye, that he is. The Toruvians are not the greatest geneticists in the galaxy. There are several inconsistencies between the real Rodney and the copy." He placed his hand on her shoulder. "It's over."

…..

Dr. Weir and the Colonel came to the Wraith cage within a day of Beckett's visit and brought Miko out of it. Their wary expressions did little to calm the nervous young woman as they walked her to the infirmary. Miko feared the Colonel, but he was being nice to her and he even smiled a little when she looked at him. They passed her quarters. There wasn't time now, but Miko wanted to go in and look at the family photos that she kept in a binder, and wear something light and loose against her skin.

But first she had to do this one thing.

The Doctor lay in a special room that Beckett had made up for him. He was struggling but alive, bleary with morphine but looking straight at her as she stood in the doorway. He had looked at her this way only one time before, the night he had put the chip in her arm. McKay moved his hand, beckoning Kusanagi to come to him. She hesitated, so needing to forget right now that it took all she had to keep from whimpering.

"Please," he breathed. And she approached and stood by him.

Dr. Beckett sat her on the mattress, next to McKay's legs. The physician took up a thin-needled syringe, poked it into a bottle of Lidocaine and drew out a couple of cc's of the anesthetic. This he injected into Miko's arm where the memory chip was buried. Miko didn't say anything as Doctor McKay looped one of his fingers around her thumb. His eyes kept closing and then opening sleepily. His finger tightened and relaxed along with his eyes.

Dr. Weir and Colonel Sheppard stood nearby. Miko blushed to think that they might be watching this touching, which, even though light and careful and small, felt bigger than almost anything to her now.

Once Miko's arm was numb enough, Beckett picked up a scalpel, made a slit in her skin and removed the memory chip with a tweezers. He looked at it with interest.

"This little bugger's an amazing piece of technology."

"What is?"

She found herself in the infirmary, sitting on the edge of a bed occupied by the Doctor. He looked gravely injured and deathly pale, with bandages on his chest and an oxygen mask on his face. The Doctor. Her Doctor McKay. Shocked, she stood.

"What has happened to the Doctor?" she asked Beckett. As if frightened of her, Elizabeth stepped back, as Sheppard stepped forward and placed a hand near his firearm.

"Take a moment to get your breath, Miko," Beckett said, reaching for her.

Miko stepped away from him. "Please tell me why I am here."

…..

"Good morning, Miko. How are you today?"

Dr. Kusanagi was hard at work when Zelenka entered the lab. She started at the sound of his voice. Her calculator slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor.

"I am fine," she replied, trying to sound sincere. "And you?"

"I am well, thank you." Her good friend poured himself a cup of coffee, tasted it, winced and muttered something in Czech while reaching for the sugar. "I have just seen Rodney. Today he will be released from the infirmary."

"I hope that he will not be sent off world again." As she bent to retrieve her calculator, Miko noticed Dr. Zelenka watching her intently. He had been doing that a lot, lately. Two nights ago, Miko dreamed that she and Zelenka were downstairs in the Wraith cage. He was asking her questions in his native tongue; she was saying, "I don't know," in hers.

Two weeks had passed since that strange moment when Miko realized that she was in the infirmary seated on the edge of the Doctor's bed. Dr. Beckett explained to Miko that she had been in the gateroom when McKay was brought through, barely alive, shot in the chest while on an off-world mission. The shock of seeing him like this had sent her crashing to the floor in a dead faint. She came to unable to recall what had happened, a form of retrograde amnesia, Dr. Beckett had said, caused by the trauma of seeing her respected colleague's terrible injury.

News of the Doctor's wounding had produced a tidal wave of reaction among the city's population. Miko had tried to console her friends, the Doctor's teammates, but they behaved strangely towards her and she gave up trying to help them.

Then Miko realized to her horror that everyone knew. The Doctor knew, as did all of her colleagues, Dr. Zelenka and the rest. She worried that Doctor McKay would get rid of her rather than have to work in the lab every day with a lovesick puppy. She worried that all of Atlantis thought her silly and schoolgirlish, that the only reason she had not been returned to Earth was because she possessed the gene and was useful in this way only and no other.

Pushing her hair behind her ears, Miko reseated herself and continued her work.

Dr. Biales arrived. Dr. Ketrovna, tall and gangly but very nice, loped in some time later. The scientists worked together quietly, one occasionally joking with another or asking a question. For two weeks no one had yelled or thrown insults or snapped their fingers sharply and said, "Come here." Biales had remarked several times on how much more focused he felt without Dr. McKay's typical outbursts breaking his concentration.

Miko thought that Dr. Bialis didn't like Dr. McKay very much. And Dr. Bialis seemed downright scared of her.

…..

Before the Doctor regained full consciousness, Miko visited with him every day. On a couple of occasions, when there was no chance that he would awaken and after assuring herself that they were unobserved, Kusanagi had slipped her hand into the Doctor's and stroked her thumb over his slack fingers.

Her visits were brief. Usually someone else was there, the Colonel, or Ronon and Teyla. Many people came to see the Doctor. They held his hand without embarrassment, even when he was awake. They stroked his high forehead and offered him sips of water and spoons full of jell-o. Once Miko saw Teyla kiss him on the cheek. He had smiled awkwardly and blushed.

When the Doctor became fully awake, Miko did not visit with him again.

In the late afternoon on the two-week anniversary of his shooting, the Doctor arrived in the lab with Ronon Dex, of all people, pushing him in a wheelchair. The huge Satedan stood head, shoulders and chest above Miko Kusanagi, who thought herself small even when standing beside Radek Zelenka. The Doctor, still under the influence of painkillers, surveyed the room while Ronon and Dr. Zelenka talked quietly in the hallway. Drs. Bialis and Ketrovna showed Doctor McKay what they had been working on. The Doctor nodded and flicked his eyes towards Miko, who tried hard to look busy.

After giving Dr. Bialis a brief instruction, McKay turned to Miko and said, "I can't work this chair, Dr. Kusanagi." He showed her how difficult it was for him to bring his hands to the wheels and push them, what with his chest injury and the stitches there pulling with every exertion. "Come here and discuss what you've been doing for the past two weeks."

She came and stood beside the chair, rifling through a few sheets of data. While looking down at McKay for a moment, she saw him shot, bleeding, lying on the gateroom floor, gasping. She smelled the sharp stink of burned gunpowder and felt the weight of a pistol in her hand, heard explosions and the sound of slugs hitting a paper target, thudding into his chest and snapping bone as a bullet tore through his skull. She saw Colonel Sheppard's reddened face as he murdered her and heard someone say, "Make sure she's dead." The data sheets flew from her hands as she covered her face to hide from the sounds and pictures in her mind.

When her hands came down, the Doctor was gone, taken away by Ronon Dex. Zelenka and the others did not stand beside her or ask her what was wrong. They waited silently near the doorway until she collected herself and then muttered some quiet words of concern.

"Perhaps I should see Dr. Beckett," she mumbled, preoccupied and seeing over and over the horrible images that played out before her. Zelenka nodded, looking relieved that she was leaving.

Dr. Beckett gazed at the floor as she described the frightening visions. He placed a blood pressure cuff on her arm and pumped it full of air. She watched him intently. Something else happened, then. She saw him, saw them, together, downstairs in the Wraith cage, and he was doing there exactly what he was doing right now.

"Your heart suddenly started racing, my dear," he said, removing the cuff and placing his right middle finger over the radial artery on her wrist. This made her heart literally pound in her chest. Her breaths came faster, with so many heartbeats and not enough oxygen to keep up with them.

"Come, now. Lie down." She let him help her with this, and she lay there unhappy and frightened. Her eyes welled with tears. "I'll give you a sedative. Rest awhile, then we'll talk." He didn't question her about recent illnesses or other problems. He didn't ask about the amnesia or how the Doctor's visit to the lab had gone, as if he didn't need to.

…..

The sedative that Dr. Beckett gave Miko worked like a charm. She was left alone on the cot, where she slept peacefully until raised voices and the tromping of boots on the infirmary floor broke her dreamless slumber.

"I _told_ ye that handing her load of crap wouldn't work! Nothin' can stop this and we're goin' to have to…" and someone closed Beckett's office door. Miko couldn't hear what was being said after that, but looking over at the glass-enclosed room, she saw the physician speaking animatedly with Dr. Weir, the Colonel, Dr. McKay and Ronon Dex, who was apparently still on wheelchair detail. The conversation lasted a long time, with even the large Runner contributing. Everyone seemed quite passionate in what they said and there was a lot of arm waving and forehead rubbing, the latter mostly on Dr. McKay's part, since he was still too sore to raise his arms above waist level, let alone wave them around.

At last, the Doctor hung his head. The group looked at him sadly, as if he were burdened with a great woe. They reached out to him, and Elizabeth crouched next to the wheelchair and placed her hand on his arm. She said something, her large grey eyes compassionate and worried. He nodded and raised his head gamely.

Dr. Miko Kusanagi didn't think it necessary to hide the fact that she had been awake from her nap for a long time, observing the others. When Ronon opened the office door, he looked out across the silent infirmary and smiled at her in his small way. She smiled back uncertainly. The group approached her bed, where Miko sat up with her legs crossed and tucked up under her. The Colonel sat down at the end of the mattress. Elizabeth and Dr. Beckett stood at bedside, while the Doctor, her Doctor, was wheeled up close by Ronon Dex.

Dr. Weir began. "We have tried to keep the truth from people in the past," she said. "It usually..."

"Always," the Colonel interrupted.

Dr. Weir refocused herself. "It always fails."

Miko nodded, although she didn't understand at all.

"There is something that we have to tell you. About what happened to Dr. McKay."

She nodded again, suddenly feeling so small, so tiny in this high bed, with all of these large people around her, weighing her down with their presence.

"About the Doctor?" she asked, trying to make her voice big, fully present, not like a girl crushing on one of her tutors.

"You're starting to remember, lass, and as much as we'd like prevent that, it's going to happen anyway no matter."

"I want to go back to the lab," she said, trying to get up. "Just let me do my work."

A hand caught hers and she saw that the Doctor was holding her fast even though it pulled his chest and irritated the healing incision there. He looked her right in the eye, and the memory of a similar moment showed its thin edge, a one-dimensional representation of itself.

"Sit," the Doctor said, asking. "No one blames you for anything, Miko." He let go of her hand, which made his presence less embarrassing. She leaned back against the gentle rise at the head of the bed. Dr. Beckett brought it up a little more and arranged her pillow so that it was just right.

Doctor McKay spoke for a long time. Miko unconsciously brought her hands up to her chest, remembering the times that she had shot him there and how the frothy pink sputum that had bubbled over his lips.

She remembered more than the Doctor, because he had not been in Atlantis all twelve times. She remembered more than the Colonel, his battles with Dr. Beckett and especially the day that he had strangled her. Dr. Weir knew nothing of standing outside the Wraith cage, letting her tears fall onto the floor. Ronon couldn't recall the times that he and Teyla and the Colonel had stayed in McKay's room, praying their various prayers, staring at the Doctor's diplomas hung on the walls.

Miko remembered all of it for everyone, even if she didn't tell them so.

The Doctor told her about the dodecahedron, the 12-sided polyhedron where he had lived when there were a dozen copies of himself, about what the twelfth had discussed with him and about the memory chip still buried in his arm.

He didn't tell her why she had been his chosen one. So many people had come to her wanting to know why. Even when she'd told them the truth, no one had believed her. So she didn't ask Doctor McKay, in case the truth was unbelievable or painful or so embarrassing that she would have to return to Earth and never see him again.

"Ultimately, I didn't have a choice," the Doctor said. "The twelfth copy said he'd come through the gate and kill Ronon and the Colonel to prevent them from killing him. Then he told me that he'd changed his mind and would rather stay behind and work to help his people. Which meant sending me in his place."

McKay paused then. Ronon looked protectively over the physicist's shoulder, checking his welfare. The Doctor shifted in the chair and continued. "In the end he double-crossed me. I'm actually a little impressed. Didn't know I had it in me. He was seriously flawed, though. Absolutely no conscience. A perfect copy in every way except for that. At least, I hope his ruthlessness would be considered an exception.

"My one mistake was assuming you were slower on the draw, Miko. I reminded myself first to implant the chip, and your involvement was not given a high enough priority." His eyes darted towards her face, and then focused somewhere else. "You did a…good job. Thanks for trusting me. I know how much you want to forget everything that happened, but your memories are returning. I'm sorry."

Doctor McKay looked pale and thinner than she remembered. He had suffered through all of this, in his own way more than she had. One day they might be able to talk to each other about what had happened, to share their experiences as friends who liked and supported each other. Perhaps one day she would be as close to him as someone who went with him on missions through the stargate.

Miko closed her eyes. She imagined a garnet, a blood-red, 12-sided gemstone that symbolizes never-ending love and devotion. She turned the vision of her Doctor and the dozen times she killed him into a blood-red stone, which she held tight and tighter, squeezing the suffering out of it until there were only her memories and her never-ending love left inside. The imaginary stone was then placed under her skin, in her arm where the chip used to be. This she would carry with her forever.

FIN


End file.
